


Moths and Butterflies

by gold_pebble



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eating Disorders, Healing, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mads Mikkelsen is Gellert Grindelwald, Michael Fassbender is Theseus Scamander, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Triggers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 21:42:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13303851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gold_pebble/pseuds/gold_pebble
Summary: Percival Graves is a broken man. Hurt and haunted by nightmares, Percival lives in the lingering fear that the man who kidnapped and tortured him will come back with the intention of finishing what he started.Credence Barebone is a broken boy. After living his entire life demonizing magic, a violent burst of his power leaves him blind and defenceless in a world he doesn’t belong to anymore.Percival and Credence meet at Lady Ethel Sinnet’s House for Wizards and Witches in Need of Help, a psychiatric hospital where Seraphina Piquery brings Percival so that he can heal properly.Percival hadn’t expected healing would’ve been so difficult.(I'm shit at summaries....)





	Moths and Butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> So… this year I went through some tough shit: many people and pets I love died, I went through my first romantic delusion (which then became a delusion about that person even as a friend), eating disorders, and I began pulling the hair from the back of my head as a stress reliever. After I told my therapist that I enjoyed writing very much, she suggested me to write down how I felt, and how I think things can be fixed, making imaginary characters go through it in order to alleviate a bit of the anxieties, fears, and worries I have. Since I did something like this before (when I began high school I wrote a 250 pages fic because that sudden change of routine stressed me so much that I kept scratching my hand – and I still have scars of that shit) and it somehow helped, I decided to do the same thing, hoping that the effect will be the same.  
> This fic has no intention to be realistic, nor historically accurate. It’s just me trying to cope with 12 months of bullshit.
> 
> (Note: my first language is not English, and therefore there might be some mistakes here and there. I hope they won’t be too many and, especially, won’t ruin the reading experience. If someone happened to find any and wrote a comment suggesting how to correct them, I would be more than pleased to do it!)

And there was light, and there was fresh air, and there was sound.

And Percival screamed in anger, and cried of relief, and crawled on the cold tiles of the floor. And he was happy, and he was sad, and he wanted to set everything on fire.

Then, he collapsed on the floor, head dizzy and limbs heavy, and went back to the void he had lived in for many days.

 

* * *

 

 

In the following days, he lost track of time, space, and of his own body.

Darkness spat him out to devour him again in the matter of seconds, and he couldn’t do anything but fight against his own weakness in a sad attempt at not fainting once more.

He failed each time, and whenever his eyes were closed, he saw Grindelwald.

Grindelwald hidden behind a corner, waiting and grinning at the stupidity of the man he would have caught once more; Grindelwald wearing his clothes and fooling everyone Percival had ever known; Grindelwald eating his food, spending his money, reading his books, living _his life_.

_And no one noticed._

Oblivion swallowed him whole.

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re not gaining any weight, honey,” the nurse said shaking the papers she was holding, a disappointed expression drawn all over her weathered face.

Percival nodded meekly, eyes casted low, fixed on his linen slippers as if they were the most interesting things in the world. He was already aware that the nurse was just being nice, by saying that he wasn’t gaining weight. His weight was _dropping_ ; he could see it in his arms and legs, in all the parts of his body he managed to observe without using a mirror. Skin on bones, that was it. In some places there were a little muscles _clinging_ to his tendons, but otherwise, there was barely anything to look at.

“Did you eat anything today?” she asked.

He shook his head.

No, he hadn’t eaten anything that day. And the day before. And the one before that.

Not that he hadn’t tried, but… he _just_ couldn’t eat. Anytime a volunteer with a tray of food entered his room, all what he could think of was that, under those smiling faces, there might have been Grindelwald or one of his devotees, and that his meal might have been poisoned. By when the volunteers put the tray on the bedside table, Percival had completely lost his appetite and had already pushed himself in the further corner from whoever was in the room. He never talked to them, even if he always looked at them sideways from his little corner, hoping to spot any suspicious behaviour before they could harm him. The volunteers never did anything out of the ordinary, but he was sure that, even if they never tried to shove the food down his throat, there was something going on.

He had to get his food himself; it had to be packaged, not heated, and no one but him could touch it.

Since his hospitalization, the only food that had been able to answer to his standards were the soups the kitchen staff locked in a pantry by the refrigerator. To get to them, he had to wait until night-time and then tip toe to the kitchens, being careful to avoid all the nurses, doctors and volunteers who often walked by to control that all the patients were still in their rooms. He drank the soups directly from their can, the sharp edges of it cutting into his lips so deep he tasted his own blood.

The nurse snorted, losing the nice attitude she had had since that morning. “Percival, your doctor explained to you why we can’t let you wander in the hospital at night.” Her voice had the same tone his old nanny used to scold him with when he was a child and didn’t want to behave.

Again, Percival nodded as the hot feel of shame tightened his chest.

He had been found sitting on the pantry floor, blood dripping from his cut lips, fingers wrapped so tightly around a can of tomato soup that his knuckles had turned white.

Since that night, his room had been wrapped with spells that didn’t let him get out of it if a staff member wasn’t escorting him.

He heard her sigh, and, with the corner of his eye, saw her put the papers back in their folder. The papers with the blue stickers were the one about his weight losses and gains; the ones with the red one were about his mental health. That day, the papers the nurse had held were signed with both stickers.

“I can ask him if he has some free time, this evening…” she proposed, voice sweet again. “Maybe a shorter session that usual. Would you like that?”

For the third time, Percival signed ‘no’ with his head.

He didn’t like his therapist; _too blond_. And he didn’t want another therapy session: he wanted to go back to his room, curl up on the bumpy mattress, pull the blankets over his head and, with all the lights on, let his eyes rest a little.

“Alright then. Off the scale.”

Percival took a step back, stepping off the old scale made out of scratched, shining metal. Its needle sprang back to zero with a loud clangour, making him jump almost out of his own skin. Goosebumps spread all over his neck and arms.

“You know it does this noise, Percival… come on, let’s go back to your room.”

Holding him by the elbow, the nurse helped him walk out of the weighting room and through the corridor. In his opinion, the hall was the safest place in the entire hospital: there were no windows and, if he sat by the short side, he could see all what was going on. They let him sit against one of the corridor walls if he had been good enough at his therapy session.

The nurse took her wand from one of her pockets and waved it in front of the door signed by the number 513, breaking the charm that kept it closed. A purple, thin gas spread all around, caressing Percival’s ankles before disappearing. The only time Percival had spoken to her, he had pleaded her to put a spell on his room, something to keep strangers out of it when he wasn’t in there. Anytime he left the room, the nurse put the spell on the door, and anytime he had to get back in there, she broke it.

It was an easy spell; a wizard as powerful as Grindelwald would’ve been able to break it without thinking about it twice, but Percival found it comforting enough to not get crazy with preoccupation anytime he was forcefully dragged out of his room.

He sat on the bed, suddenly finding his knees interesting enough to ignore any attempt of the nurse at communicating with him.

She left after emitting a dramatic sigh.

Percival took the woollen blanked folded at the foot of the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders, holding it tight in front of his chest. The pyjama he was wearing did nothing to protect him from the cold of that winter, nor from the itch that came from the cheap blanket, but it didn’t matter.

He let himself fall on the bed, knees pressed against his chest and forehead against the cool wall. Even if his eyes closed by themselves, Percival knew he wouldn’t be able to rest.

 

* * *

 

 

During his last days of hospitalization, Percival received a few letters from some of the people who worked at MACUSA. When he received them, the envelopes had already been opened, but he didn’t really care. He read the letters while sitting on the floor by the bed, back pressed against the slightly humid wall. Even if they were meant to make him feel better, with all those tearful excuses and colourful get-well cards, by the time he finished reading them, the knot in his throat made it difficult to breathe.

It was true, then; _no one_ had noticed it wasn’t him. What had been a desperate thought his therapist had told him to ignore, in order to get better, had just transformed into concrete reality. No one had noticed it was another person who played his part like a theatrical role, not even his best friend and boss.

He threw all the letters and cards away the following morning, pushing them in the nurse’s hands when she got to his room to escort him to the showers. She had asked him if he was sure, and his answer had been a furious nod before he rushed to the showers.

 

* * *

 

 

Seraphina sent him a box the day before he could finally go home. It had arrived to him already open - as always -, and it contained one of his winter coats, a pair of trousers, a shirt, a thick sweater, and the boots that were so worn out he used to wear with spats to hide how shabby they really were.

Seraphina had entered into his apartment, had time to rummage through his stuff, choose what she liked best, and leave without the neighbours calling the police. She was fairly inoffensive, but what if someone dangerous did it? What if someone put a curse in his bedroom, or mixed rat poison with his tealeaves, or simply stayed there, sitting in the darkness, waiting for him to return with their wand in their hands, ready to hit him with an unforgivable curse.

Nausea took over his empty stomach, making it twist and churn.

He wouldn’t be safe in his own house, no matter how many protective spells he put on the doors and windows. He had to find another place to hide, somewhere he hadn’t been before, so hidden that not even his mother wouldn’t be able to find him.

Seraphina would’ve found him, though.

There was no way to hide from her; she knew people all around the USA, and it was impossible to escape from her radar.

Maybe she worked for Grindelwald.

He threw up in the chamber pot placed under the bed, spitting acids and water until tears ran down his cheeks because of the physical effort. The muscles in his arms trembled before his elbows gave out, and he fell face first on the floor, dodging the edge of the pot only by an inch.

On the cold pavement, huddled up by a vase filled almost to the brim with his own piss and vomit, next to the clothes that were his own but reeked of another man, Percival realized that there wouldn’t have been no future for him.

 

* * *

 

 

The nurse had said that the pyjama was his, and therefore Percival would’ve kept it. His clothes still reeked of Grindelwald’s skin, and he couldn’t bear the thought of wearing them, even for the short walk that he had to do to reach his apartment building. He would’ve much preferred walking around in his hospital pyjama.

He wore the boots, finding out that his fingers had lost sensibility, and had to fight against the laces to tie them in secure _double_ knots. His fingertips had gone numb, and he couldn’t remember when it had happened. He put the coat over the pyjamas, doing his best to ignore its smell as he buttoned it up.

The rest of the clothes Seraphina had sent him were too large for him, and having them against his skin would’ve been like feeling Grindelwald’s touch on him again. Percival hid them under the mattress, hoping that no one checked the room before he left the hospital.

As soon as he was ready, he knocked on the door to let the nurse know that he was in conditions decent enough to go home.

The spell that kept him locked in broke, and the door opened. The first thing Percival saw was the nurse’s lips stretched in a wide, happy smile that showed all of her crooked teeth. “Are you happy you’re _finally_ going home?” she asked taking him by the arm, as if they were casually strolling, and guiding him towards the stairs.

Percival nodded, eyes moving feverishly to analyse the space, checking if something was _maybe_ out of place. Of course, if Grindelwald were around, he would’ve been able enough to disguise his presence among the hospital staff or its patients.

Beside him, the nurse was still chattering, clearly happy to get rid of him at last. She kept saying that he had done _amazing_ progresses since the day he had been brought in, but it was clear that even she didn’t believe in her own words. They both knew there hadn’t been _any_ progresses in _any_ way, and that Percival was the same, _damaged_ man he was the first day, when he could barely keep his eyes open.

Once he was out, however, he would’ve been able to eat what he wanted, and maybe he would’ve finally gained a little strength.

They went down the three stories of stairs and arrived at the reception desk, where a smiling man in a suit was reading a book. A ceramic cup was floating beside him, filled to the brim with piping hot tea.

“Hello,” the nurse cheered.

The man closed his book and went up straight, pushing the cup of tea away with a wave of his hand. He smoothed his jacket suit with a hand and smiled at them. “Hello, Marcia.” His dark eyes shifted to him. “Hello, Director.”

Percival took hold of the nurse’s arm, wrapping his fingers around it until they hurt. Shivers were running down his whole body. Sweat was dripping down his back. He knew. How did he know? He thought he was safe there, that no one but his therapist knew who he actually was! Someone had told him. Someone with bad intentions, someone who wanted to hurt him, finish the work Grindelwald had started.

The nurse let out a whine before battling his hand away. “Edward knows who you are, Percival, because his brother is an auror at MACUSA,” she, _Marcia_ , explained with a falsely sweet voice. Then, she turned towards Edward: “Director Graves, here, is ready to be dismissed.”

“Of course.”

The man produced the necessary papers for his release, and they floated in front of his face alongside a fountain pen.

Without reading them, Percival signed wherever the nurse pointed he had to sign and, in the matter of the blink of an eye, he was outside of the hospital hall, whipped by the freezing wind of winter.

It had snowed. The sky was milky and the streets covered by patches of ice. A mailbox across the street was covered in snow and ice, and stalactites of ice dandled from the building gutters. There were no food carts in sight.

For the first time, Percival _actually_ wondered how much time he had spent in the hospital. He wondered if it was already the New Year, and found himself saddened by the idea that, if that was so, then no one had visited him for Christmas.

He put his hands into his pockets, and felt something against his right palm. Seraphina had put in there some money, not much but enough to buy some food, and his apartment keys.

Before his hunger could make him walk to the nearest open grocery store, a breath of wind pushed Grindelwald’s smell into his nostrils. Percival gagged violently as he realized he _had to get rid_ of that coat as soon as possible, because he couldn’t stand a second more wearing that thing.

It took him very little to find a _Goodwill_ store – there were usually a few around hospitals, no matter if no-majs or wizarding – and there he bought another coat, no matter if it wasn’t as nice as the one he already had. As soon as he got out of the store, he took the money and keys out of the pockets, took the coat off and threw it in the nearest bin. The new one made his arms itch worse than the woollen blanket his nanny wrapped him with when he was sick, but the memory was so comforting, in his mind, he barely minded at all.

Then, with the little he still had left, he went to a grocery store and bought cans of tomato soup and peaches in syrup, and some bottles of pink lemonade.

 _Before_ Grindelwald he would’ve bought some coffee too, but Grindelwald had happened, and he used to make coffee and let its scent linger in the apartment while Percival whined in the closet he had been closed in. The sole idea of drinking coffee made him nervous enough to sweat.

The walk home was long and tiring. Painful, even. He felt like there was no more cartilage between his bones, and the boots at his feet were so heavy he barely managed to lift them from the ground. The cans and bottles in the paper bag he was holding were almost biting into his fingers, stiffened by the cold, as if they wanted to reach the bone under the thin layer of skin.

He wished Seraphina had sent him gloves too.

By the time he reached his building and managed to climb the five levels of stairs to get to his apartment, he was a sweating, aching, and completely out of breath. His lungs hurt, and his hair had stuck to his forehead.

He stood in front of the front door of his apartment. Nothing seemed to have changed; the golden _13-E_ was still in its place, and the door handle was shining in the bright light of the early afternoon.

Percival gulped and put the bag on the floor by his feet.

With a hand raised, fighting against his trembling muscles, Percival tried to conjure a charm to check if his apartment was empty. His magic flowed from the deep pit of his stomach to his sternum and then into his arm, pouring to his outstretched fingers. And there, right at the tips, it stopped.

It was stuck.

His magic was stuck in his own body. It prickled in his arms and palms as if it was trying to escape, to respond to the orders Percival was giving it. But it _couldn’t_. It was _stuck_.

It was stuck, and he couldn’t do _anything_ about it.

Tears welled into his eyes as he tried again, and again, and again. Anytime he raised his hand and stretched his fingers, his magic hurt him worse than the previous time. He focused _harder_ , visualizing the inside of his apartment, all its rooms and furniture, recalling how the wooden floor felt under his bare feet and of which colour the walls of the living room were, and the magic pushed through his veins, hurting him as much as thorns.

He screamed in pain, holding his left arm, as his knees gave out under him. He fell on them harshly, pain spreading in his already aching legs.

There was no way of knowing if there was someone in his apartment.

Grindelwald was in there, Percival could feel it. Grindelwald was in there, waiting for him, still wearing his clothes and with a satisfied smirk on his face.

He glanced at the bag on the floor. He didn’t have much strength, but if he hit someone with the cans he had bought, then he would’ve had enough advantage to take a knife from the kitchen.

Picking the bag up made him huff and, by the time he approached the door, ragged breaths were coming out of his mouth. He balanced his groceries on one knee and used his free hand to open the door, pushing it with a foot.

The smell hit his nose. It was old bleach, weeks of dust, and floor wax. There was no scent of coffee, food, cologne. Nothing. The MACUSA guys had cleaned up the place after he had been found.

As always. After all, it was in MACUSA’s protocol: clean up, erase all the signs of magical crimes, and leave everything spotless and odourless.

He slowly walked into the apartment.

 _His_ apartment. _His_ house, the one he had been living in for sixteen years and that his mother despised because it was no place for a Graves.

Inside, there was no one.

Step after step, he moved towards the kitchen island, eyes wandering around to study his own house. He had forgotten how dark it was… the walls were of a warm shade of brown, the wood of the floor was almost black, the furniture of different coffee and chocolate shades. The only colour in the room was the crimson of the long and heavy curtains. Everything was covered by a thin layer of shimmering dust, even the paintings, the mirrors, and the books on the bookcase shelves.

His head kept turning to the liquor cabinet where Grindelwald had kept him. He found himself asking what had happened to his bottles of booze, because drinking, in that moment, seemed to be the better thing he could do to restore – at least – part of his sanity.

He moved towards his bedroom, the only magical addiction he had attached to the original apartment. It was an hexagonal room with a stone fireplace, an armchair, a closet, and a queen sized bed with one side against the wall. There was only one small window, and the light of the afternoon entered into the room through the left ajar shutters.

The bed had been stripped of the blankets and sheets, and the mattress laid there, bare and white, and with a naked pillow on top of it.

Percival put the bag on the bed and then slid on the floor.

That was _his_ space, _his_ house. No one but him was there. He was safe.

He was safe.

He ate in front of the cold fireplace, drinking the soup from the can and bringing the peaches to his mouth with his dirty fingers, letting the slices slide on his tongue, cold and slippery like uncooked fish. Then, with his pointer, he cleaned up the syrup that was still left in the can. It dripped down his chin and on the new coat, soaking through the cheap wool. He drank one of the bottles of lemonade in one breath, the bubbles in it stinging his throat, and let it roll on the floor until it reached the empty cans.

His eyes could barely stay open, but there was still something missing.

Before falling asleep, he crawled to the kitchen and took a steak knife, the one he could remember sharpening the night before Grindelwald got him.

Percival got back to his bedroom, curled up on the floor by the bed and, finally, fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

 

It was the sound of the door opening that woke him with a start.

After the door closed, he heard the sound of heels clicking on the tiles of the kitchen. Percival’s hand wrapped around the handle of the knife as he scrambled on his feet.

He threw himself on the figure who had just gotten in, pushing it against the kitchen counter, putting the blade against its neck. The perfume of the figure was familiar, and the voice that screamed too, but he ignored it and used all his strength to shout: “Who are you?!”

“It’s me, Percy!”

It was Seraphina’s voice, but how could he be so sure? After all, Grindelwald had taken his identity for days, before someone noticed.

“And how can I be sure?”

Seraphina was breathing hard, a hand that was trying to push the knife away from her throat. Percival might not have eaten anything in the last weeks but soup and a few peaches, but he was going to fight with his life, if it meant he wasn’t going to end up closed in the liquor cabinet again.

She wasn’t answering. Percival pushed the knife against her skin; not cutting, just letting her know it was _there_ , ready to slash her throat.

“Your mother has a cat shaped key chain that is made out of diamonds and purrs!” she screamed. “For her birthday you gave her a seventeenth century copy of _The Prince_! When you were sixteen you bleached your hair and eyebrows, and I gave you your black coat as a present last Yule! We went to the theatre to watch _Cabiria_ , and you told me you didn’t like it, but you still went to see it two times more!”

It wasn’t enough. It was easy for Grindelwald to dig into his victims’ minds and scoop up events that had happened in the light of the day. If she wanted to get out of that situation alive, she had to say something far more personal than all that bullshit regarding his mother.

Percival pressed the blade against her skin. A little more pressure, and there would’ve been blood. She let out a strangled noise.

“You call me ‘Nina’ when you’re drunk!”

 _True_.

The knife slipped through his fingers and fell on the tiles with a dull sound, and he took a step back. Seraphina slumped against the counter, catching her breath. In the darkness of the evening, Percival could see that her face was flushed, and that a few locks of bleached blond hair had escaped her turban.

 _‘I’m sorry,’_ he mouthed as he kept stepping back.

Seraphina had a hand over her heart and her dark eyes were still very wide, but Percival knew she was gaining her composure back.

He let himself fall on the chair by the dining table.

For a long time, the only sounds in the apartment were the fridge and their shaking breaths.

He had almost killed his best friend with a kitchen knife.

In the end, Grindelwald had _never_ left, no matter where he was in that moment; he still haunted Percival as he was there with him.

“For Merlin’s beard, Percy…” Seraphina murmured. She cleared her throat, then added: “I… I thought they had done you good, in the hospital…”

Percival shook his head. It was very clear that nothing good had happened in there.

With a gesture of her hand, Sera lit all the candles in the apartment, breaking the almost impenetrable darkness of the house.

And she saw him. And the noise that her throat produced made him feel worse than he had ever felt since she had stepped in. “Oh, Percy…” she moved in his direction, still waddling a little. “What… did they give you any food? Why are you wearing those clothes?”

Her voice was breaking more and more, question after question, and Percival had never felt more miserable in all his life.

 

* * *

 

 

Once Seraphina was done with her – rhetorical – questions, they didn’t speak. They both needed time to adjust to their new situation, and words would’ve just ruined their mental processes.

As Percival sat in the chair, an almost irresistible urge telling him to slam his head against the table until he bled out, he listened to Seraphina move around his house. He heard her gather the empty cans and bottles to put them in the bin under the kitchen sink, make the bed with fresh linens, open the water in the bathroom.

Comforting noises that he had heard many times.

She was there, and was still his friend, and was _still_ helping him out. She may not have had noticed it wasn’t him, but she was doing her best to show how much she loved him.

But she _hadn’t_ noticed, and that burning thought wasn’t going anywhere. It was stuck in his mind as much as his magic was stuck in his body; it was there, piercing through his every thought with stinging pain.

She hadn’t noticed; she hadn’t noticed; she hadn’t noticed.

A hand on his shoulder made him jump out of his thinking. Obviously, it was Sera’s. “I prepared you a bath. Come up.”

They were quiet as they moved towards the bathroom, a room whose floor and walls were covered by light green tiles. A towel had been draped on the mirror above the washbasin.

Noticing what he was looking, Sera explained: “I thought it would’ve been better for you to not see your reflection for a while.”

With his head, he gave her a small sign of approval before beginning to undress. He knew he was a _horrific_ show to watch, especially for a woman like Seraphina, who slept only with tremendously beautiful men and women, but she helped him strip anyway, taking the clothes from his hands and putting them in the laundry basket.

She helped him step into the bathtub too, holding him by the arm and lowering him slowly into the steaming hot water. Under his thighs and feet Percival could feel grains of salt, and the vapour all around them smelled of lavender.

Then, she sat on the bathtub edge, and Percival saw by the nervous movements of her fingers how anxious she was. He had already seen her behave so; it had happened after she had pushed him down the stairs when they both were drunk, and some of his ribs had broken in the fall. It had been an accident, and so had been what had happened with Grindelwald, but she wasn’t going to let it down for a long time, nor apologize anytime soon. She was too proud to say she was sorry.

It was fine; he didn’t want her to apologize. At least, not after almost slashing her throat. They both were terrible people; they deserved each other.

“I don’t have my magic.”

It was the first time in weeks he heard the sound of his own voice, and it frightened him far more than how it should have. It wasn’t his voice anymore. It was _Grindelwald’s_. Grindelwald was talking from within him.

Nausea tightened his throat.

“ _What?”_ Sera’s question was a mere murmur.

Percival cupped some water into his palm, fingers tight so that none of it could fall back into the bathtub, and pronounced the first charm he had ever learned: “ _Aguamenti._ ”

Nothing visible happened, but inside of him Percival felt thorns tear his flesh. He let out a low whine, and his hand fell back into the water.

“I tried it before too… it serves _nothing_ …”

“C-can you still feel it? Or… or it’s…?” Seraphina left the question unfinished, the words too terrible to pronounce aloud.

Percival put his knees under his chin and hugged his legs. Blinking wasn’t doing anything, to push the tears away now. “It’s still there. It hurts anytime I try to use it… it’s blocked inside of me.”

He saw her nod, dark eyes staring the sink, and unwrap her headpiece, exposing her blonde hair. In the light of the candles, it appeared shiny and of a reddish colour, in deep contrast with the shadows on her features. The tear that rolled down her cheek sparkled, before she hid her face into her hands.

She was _crying_.

Percival couldn’t believe it. He had seen Sera cry only a few times, in the whole length of their friendship, and in those times he had known how to console her. When her mother had died, he had hugged her tight, prepared her a nice bath and meal, and then had spent the night with her, holding her until she had fallen asleep. But seeing her weep and cry because of him was something else, something he didn’t know how to help.

“I’m sorry, Percy…” she whined, voice muffled from her hands. “I could’ve prevented this, taken Grindelwald before he hurt you… or at least noticed it wasn’t you!” She shouted the last sentence, hands leaving her face to entwine into her own hair. “I’m terrible, Percy… and I can’t fix this…”

Percival hugged her, pressing his wet body to hers, and rested his head on her shoulder. He was cold, and her clothes were stinging his belly and arms, but it didn’t matter.

 _They_ were important, and nothing else.

 

* * *

 

 

Seraphina put her coat on after hours. Her face and eyes were still swollen, but they weren’t shining with tears anymore, and her voice was clear again.

Percival watched her from his sitting position on the bed.

“I was thinking,” she said, “that maybe you could go to Lady Ethel Sinnet… I should’ve sent you there when we found you, but…”

“I’ll think about it.”

She turned on her heels to look at him, a small, shy smile on her lips. The veil she usually wrapped around her head was around her neck, dangling loosely against her sweater. “You better, Percy.” She opened the door and, before heading out, she stated: “I’ll pass by tomorrow afternoon, after work. Bring you some…” she waved her hand, “ _groceries_ and stuff.”

“Have a good night, _Nina_.”

“You too, Perce.”

And she headed out.

 

* * *

 

 

Time lost its meaning, but Percival was happy that way. He had turned all the clocks so that they faced the walls, and had asked Seraphina to hide all the mirrors under towels, scarfs, and blankets because he knew he wasn’t ready to see his face. He knew when it was six of the evening because Sera passed by, bringing food, books, newspapers, _clothes_.

Tidying his apartment became a soothing routine. As soon as he woke up and drank some tea, he began dusting his bookcase, waxing the floor, cleaning the space between the tiles of the kitchen and the bathroom. It meant making his house _his_ again. The new clothes Seraphina brought him ended up in neat piles by the closet in his bedroom, because opening its door would have meant looking at all those garments he had worn for years and now smelled of Grindelwald, and he wasn’t ready to face that either.

Everyday, Sera brought him the letters from the people who worked at MACUSA too. Most of them were get-well letters, a few were complains about his absence, others just wanted to say they were sorry and that they wanted to do more. He burned them all in the fireplace before going to bed, where he spent the nights reading _Those Barren Leaves_ to avoid falling asleep and see Grindelwald close him in the cabinet, where no one would’ve ever found him.

When he felt himself falling asleep, he clutched the book tight in his fingers, knowing that, once he had succumbed to his own tiredness, his hands would’ve relaxed and the book would’ve slipped, falling on the floor with a noise loud enough to wake him.

It was fine, he could go on with little to no rest. He had already done it during the war. It worked, and until it worked, everything was good in the world.

 

* * *

 

 

It worked until a blizzard stroke New York, and the sky darkened far earlier than the usual time. Percival had laid in his bed, and, had fallen asleep. The book slid to his side on the mattress, and never fell on the floor.

He dreamt of Grindelwald in his natural form, with his short blond hair and brown eyes, but with one of his suits on. It was stretched on Grindelwald’s taller and sturdier form, showing the man’s wrists and too tight around his waist. The man was shushing him, pressing a finger on his lips. His eyes were shining with delight. Percival tried to fight back, to push the man away from him, but Grindelwald was _stronger_ , and wasn’t going anywhere. He turned his head, and the door of the liquor cabinet was open. He pleaded Grindelwald to _not_ put him there, but he wouldn’t listen, and the open cabinet kept getting closer and closer. He turned back to Grindelwald, and the man was holding his wand as if it was his own.

Percival woke screaming, legs wrapped in the sheets. Sweat was dripping from his hair.

 _His wand_. Where was _his wand_?

He kicked the blankets away and rolled out of bed, falling on the floor and making the book fall with him. His elbow and knee sent waves of pain through his body, but he ignored everything in favour of crawling to the closet.

He opened its doors, and, even if the smell of Grindelwald assaulted him and made him nauseate, he rummaged in the boxes at the bottom of it, throwing them out of the closet when he found out that they had nothing in them but shoes and belts.

Seraphina had said nothing about his wand… she didn’t say anything about an auror finding it… what if Grindelwald had kept it…?

As he lifted another shoebox, he noticed a small, rectangular black box. It was too flat to be a belt’s, and he already knew that that couldn’t be a new pair of silk socks he had forgotten in their packaging.

Percival breathed in and out. It was in there, he could feel it. The small part of him that still belonged to the wizarding world was pulling him towards that box.

He picked the box up and lifted the lid and…

A pained howl left his throat as tears began flowing on his face. His wand was in there, snapped in half, the silver unicorn hair the thread that connected the two pieces of wood.

Percival took his broken wand in his hand and held it tight, clutching it as if his life depended on it. Its wood was cold, the decorations made out of silver felt like they were burning his skin. He wept with his wand pressed against his heart, sorrowful moans coming out of his mouth.

Grindelwald had taken the last bit of magic out of him.

He slowly got up. Shaking, wounded. The wand fell from his hands and bounced on the floor, the silver hair catching the red light of the lit fireplace.

He looked around himself. Open boxes of polished shoes and belts he had used maybe once were scattered around his room, creating a perfect semi-circle around where he had sat. With his sleeve, he wiped the tears and snot from his face. There was a pair of black Oxfords on the unmade bed. He didn’t remember buying them. He probably hadn’t.

The only thing that was still his was his face, and he could do as he pleased, with it.

He marched to the bathroom.

Seraphina had hidden everything that was sharp or that he could’ve used to hurt himself, but he had never told her that he kept his grandfather’s straight razor in a false bottom drawer.

It was _his_ face, and he wanted to _ruin_ it, make sure that no wizard full of himself would’ve taken him as a mark ever again. He wanted scars all over his cheeks and forehead, and in his lips and splitting his eyebrows in tiny patches of hair. Grindelwald had taken his wand, and he was going to take his own face away too. No one wanted to impersonate a deeply scarred wizard with a wand snapped in half and who couldn’t conjure the magic within himself.

Percival opened the drawer, lifted the fake bottom and got to the razor. The relationship with his grandfather had never been easy, and when he had died, the old man had thought it would’ve been _hilarious_ to leave him only a _razor_ without any value. Percival had never thought it would’ve helped him.

He tore the towel from the mirror.

Grindelwald was staring at him, wearing _his_ body like a costume. He had lost weight, his face was barely a skull covered by pasty white skin, and his hair had grown out into a black and grey mop.

 _No one wanted to impersonate a wizard with a face full of scars_.

The first cut was easy; a small, straight line across the bridge of his nose. Percival breathed through his teeth and squeezed his eyes.

And then the second that cut the tail of one of his eyebrows, and then the third that went through both his lips in a vertical line, and then the fourth on his cheekbone. And then he lost count of how many cuts he was doing, and blood was covering his face and tongue, dripping into the sink drop after drop.

He couldn’t stop. There weren’t enough. He needed _more_.

A scream made him drop the razor and turn his head. Before he could see anything through the eyelashes clumped together by the blood, strong hands took by the forearms and pushed him towards the bathtub.

“What _the fuck_ are you doing?!”

It was Sera. Seraphina had found him. She was _never_ going to forgive him for that.

She wiped the blood from his eyes, and he stared at her. “What are you doing…?”

He didn’t have any words. He had no idea how to explain. “I… it’s _his_ face…” he whispered. “I… he wouldn’t have taken me, if I…”

Seraphina made him sit in the bathtub and opened the water, eyes running all over the bathroom. “He… he would’ve chosen you anyway, Percy…” she stammered. She grabbed a towel and soaked it in the warm water in the tub, and began using it to wipe the blood from his place. “I… I can’t believe you’ve done this…”

“He broke my wand.” A babbling explanation that didn’t explain actually explain anything. Any kid got his wand broken at least once, and no one tried to maim their face.

She made a whining noise and kept cleaning him. Her chest was shaking, and Percival knew she was crying.

Again. She was crying _because of him_ again.

“I’m… you _have to_ go to Lady Ethel, Percy. I can’t help you anymore.”

And he knew she was right, so he kept silent.

**Author's Note:**

> I know, Credence wasn’t here in this chapter. I promise that he and Percival will meet in the next one. Pinky promise. Also, the next chapter is going to be very long, and I don't know how much time I'm going to need to write it all, so... hold on tight.
> 
>  
> 
> My Tumblr: renaissancewasbetter.tumblr.com  
> Comments and kudos are always apprecciated! <3


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